Mass Effect 3: Thoughts and Musings

Ok, just to get this out of the way, this post is going to have spoilers throughout it. I'm going to be all over the place with the game, so if you don't want to be spoiled about any part of the game, don't read this. (Obligatory mention that this blog is never read by anyone else.)

So, just last week I purchased Mass Effect 3 on the PS3, and today I managed to finish the story mode. I'm just going to start by listing some points that really had a profound impact on me or caught my attention. For reference, my play-through was a male Paragon Shepard.

Steve Cortez... damn. I mean, Shepard really connected with the guy, and I swear one day I'll have another go at a male Shep and those two will get some serious business done up in there.

I don't care for Liara. In the first game, which bugs me that I can't play it on the PS3 and therefore can't truly have the experience of seeing the same Shepard throughout the story (and now I've made this point too long and the sentence is weird), I felt like she and my Shepard had a special connection, and Shepard (from here out I'm only going to refer to him as Shepard since it's the same one I'm imagining through all three games) didn't see Ashley in a romantic light, especially with her somewhat racists tendencies. But by the second game Liara had changed, and she wasn't the same person anymore, she was kind of distant. I personally didn't like the change, and Shepard just drifted away from her. In the third game, it was pretty awkward between Shepard and Liara once he told her he was only interested in being friends.

I loved Jack's hairstyle in the game. I mean, I liked her look before, for some reason shaved heads on women don't bother me, but I just gushed when I saw her again and she had that sweet ponytail. And her character has grown so much! She has underlings and she's training them for the Alliance! She's a good person!

The Thresher Maw totally took down that Reaper on Tuchanka with no problem and it was so freaking awesome to see. I also felt really good about curing the genophage, but Mordin's sacrifice was pretty sad.

My sweet Tali Zorah. Ever since the first game Shepard had a thing for her, but was disappointed that she didn't appear to feel the same. So when Mass Effect 2 came around and Tali revealed she felt the same, they quickly became a couple and their relationship is one of the best things about both games. It's really great because my Shepard did not always agree with her, especially about the Geth, but he was there for her, and it was great to see that she was there for him in the third game. I was so happy when she decided to stay on the team even though I knew she would anyway.

Rannoch's final mission was just awesome. Taking down that Reaper was pretty terrifying, and I actually died once while doing it. Thankfully Shepard took it down, and it was pretty freaky when it talked to us. Shepard was getting really frustrated with the Quarian and Geth war though, and he meant serious business when he declared that no one else was going to die in that war. He ended conflict between the two sides, and it was made sad when, to upgrade the Geth to actual sentience like that of any other living being, Legion sacrificed himself. It hurt because Shepard had said that Legion was his friend, and he lived by that, trying to unite the races of his love and his friend. Thankfully, there were no other complications, the Geth immediately started helping the Quarians after, impressing Tali.

The final goodbyes to the team members from all three games were some of the most touching parts of the game. It really brought home that all of them stood together, fighting because of Shepard. His speech at the end to his crew was great too, and I was saddened that I couldn't take them all. Especially since there was almost no epilogue, and no way of knowing what happened to them. Which is my biggest complaint about the ending.

I chose to use the Crucible to synthesize all life into a combined state of synthetic and organic. Shepard couldn't destroy Synthetic life because he fought for the Geth, to get them accepted as part of the galaxy. He wouldn't control the reapers because he spent the whole game and part of the last one arguing that using them was abominable, and he said in the end of the second game that he wouldn't let fear compromise who he was. Synthesis was the only one that made any amount of sense for Shepard, even though he gave his life for it.

And for what purpose? I didn't see anything besides Joker and EDI on some kind of paradise point. I don't care about the ending as it is, but I want to know what the heck happened to my sweet Tali! Did she die? And I wanted more time for them... I wanted Tali and Shepard to have a lifetime together, to be happy with each other. When Tali called Shepard her boyfriend it gave me such joy, and to know that Shepard died, and Tali is alone if she's alive... I don't want the story to end that way. Shepard would do the right thing, but it's not what I wanted, even if he would have sacrificed his life, the choice I would have made for him, I would have wanted him to pick an option where he could live with Tali, even if it meant bad things happened.

And I hate how Joker got downsized this game. He barely felt like a presence, and his face looked weird.

-Subtle